Thursday, July 25, 2013

Two things I don't care about: The Royal Baby and Anthony Weiner's sexting

By Frank Moraes(Ed. note: I'm with Frank on this. I don't give a shit about the Royal Baby, other than to the extent that I care about human beings generally, because I loathe that silly family and stupid institution. As for Weiner, the way the media are reacting with a combination of prudish moralism, titillation, and hypocrisy almost makes me feel sorry for him. As it is, I don't care about the sexting, because I'd like to think I have a broad understanding of and appreciation for human sexuality. The problem there is the dishonesty, narcissism, and lack of judgment. I'm not sure that disqualifies him for mayor, but he does seem to be a shameless creep. -- MJWS)

I have no interest in the royal baby. In general, I have no interest in a
royal family -- at least until the sons start killing each other in order
to become king. To me, we had a war so we wouldn't have deal with this
bullshit. And then when we created this country, we specifically didn't
create our own explicit class of people who are better than the rest of
us. It's all a big joke and people who are caught up in it really need
to get a life.The other thing I don't care about is Anthony Weiner's newest sex
scandal. But I do care about how the Democratic ecosystem reacts to it.
It isn't new, of course. We all know that when something like this
happens to a Republican, they circle the wagons. Eventually, they may
abandon the man (It's always a man!) in the middle of it. But
they will assume the best and try to play defense. The Democrats are
just the opposite—they have no loyalty at all. It doesn't matter if it's
former IRS head Steven T. Miller
or Shirley Sherrod or Weiner. Democrats might think that we should be
understanding of the unnamed masses, but if it is a named person who is
part of our team, they have to go.

There is something incredibly childish about this. On the other night's All In, Chris Hayes was joined by three others to discuss how horrible Weiner is. And then Rachel Maddow went even further. I do wish that she wouldn't cover sex scandals. She has a really childish understanding of adult sexuality.
Of course human sexuality in the modern world is kind of sad and
unsettling. But that doesn't mean we can't empathize and (God forbid!)
sympathize.In addition to this, I can't get past the whole idea that we could not
have a worse government if the only people who represented us were
straight laced people who never deviated from what is acceptable
behavior on primetime network TV. We are already limited in terms of
what we can watch and what we can say. And now these people (the
supposed liberals!) want to limit us to vanilla politicians?Look, I don't know if Weiner would be a good mayor. I tend to think he would be. One of the people on All In
mentioned that he never much liked being in the legislature. But mayor
is an executive job and it seems more appropriate to his narcissistic
personality. But I don't know. And I don't have to know because I don't
live in New York. But his sex scandal strikes me as irrelevant. And it's
sad that the Democratic establishment can't seem to see that.Now if it turns out that he was sexting with Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, well, then I might care.(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)